* * *
The distances grew between Sitty and the Zikri Orb—billions of miles. After a time, they felt an ease of freedom from enemy targeting. Under Audra’s authority, they infiltrated a small NAVO space station in orbit off Besi 8. Using the ruse of sending out a distress signal and adding a phoney handicap to their ship, they made a standard approach to the docking port. With their superior fire power, they took the skeleton crew by surprise.
Emerging from the VR lock, they stalked down the corridors as a single entity, past the anti-grav generators that kept them from floating off in weightlessness.
They scavenged the docked vessels for backup and enhancement parts for their own craft. The technicians were easily overpowered. They forced them under threat of fire to replenish Sitty’s food-processor supplies and outfit the ship with certain ‘features’ which Audra had engineered. These included augmented stealth cloaking and longer range laser fire. In response to the fake signal, one of Miko’s own command-units came flying out from around the other side of the planet and appeared on the viewport. Despite Miko’s inclination for allegiance to NAVO authorities, he found himself wishing to evade communication. Why? It seemed too incredible to fathom, that Audra’s sinister influence had affected him so. Or was it his own repressed rebellious desires to defy his own commanders?
Miko shuddered at the last thought. Almost without thinking, he discharged a half ton of compressed Mimeldion from Sitty’s under-bay, shrouding the vicinity of space with a radiowave-inhibiting cloud. The NAVO command-team was thwarted. Communication was lost and the craft couldn’t track them. Sitty escaped on lumo-power alone.
The ploy was effortless; it spewed off Miko’s alien-infected mind with an unnerving ease, further bewildering him.
Sitty accelerated into time drive. Hundreds of million miles later she halted the craft and let it drift in deep space like some forsaken derelict. Audra and Miko moved toward the horizon of becoming one, acclimatizing to each other, testing each other’s edges, capacities, weaknesses. Two in the form of one was not an easy or natural condition. It was a haunting contradiction—a derision of the laws of nature. Yet it was happening. Audra began to understand Miko’s pitiful individuality. She grappled with the juvenile tenacity of his personality to affirm his righteous identity. Likewise Miko struggled to fathom Audra’s insensate recklessness, her uncaring drive for independence and malice. He learned from the cold press of her alien thoughts that she was hatching a scheme to conquer the Zikri race and become their overlord. Next she would focus her attentions on the NAVO. Miko shuddered at these implications and his role in the ghastly plan. He felt chilled under its awful weight—and at the same time, thrilled.
All this madness occurred through the Sitty VR link. The NAVO engineers of all should never have created it. He cursed their demon technology. Nor would they have been less than pleased that it had fallen into the hands of an alien power or created such a marvellous monster, Miko thought sardonically.
Some time later, a Delta probe mine of NAVO origin showed up as a flashing blip on the scattersplay projector. How could it have caught up with them so quickly? The weapon was travelling at phenomenal speed—supra light.
Miko gave a gasp of dismay. The mine was installed specifically with Sitty’s signature. Only a matter of time before it latched onto them and blew them into incandescent dust.
That his own people would try to kill him without an inquiry was something heinously unexpected. His enhanced senses flared as he sought for a way to neutralize the probe.
Miko reflected: because they were stationary and within the weapon’s heat-seeking range, it could lock onto them, even if they jumped to time drive. Also, its velocity made it difficult, if not impossible to destroy. Astounded, despite being a tactical expert himself, he engaged the scrambler and masked Sitty’s energy projection, distorting her version of herself into an incandescent wave, a ruse which befuddled the probe for all of five seconds. Audra set up a tactical skew on the starboard vane and slewed the vessel in reverse direction. The probe swung by at a dizzying speed. Miko was jarred back in his harness. Hitting the heat-lock, he yowled. Missiles fired. The timing could not have been better. The probe, slowing down from light drive to backtrack, exploded into a million pieces, merging with the dust of stars.
Miko laughed wile Audra hummed in her sinister, hee-hawing whine. The two renegades set course for Beta Alpha VI near Capeopella using a cloaking signature to mask the heat radiation that emanated from her fuselage.
Miko was confident that their stealth and ingenuity would discourage any NAVO intercept vessels, or Zikri surprise attacks. Whatever the outcome, the Zikri or the pretentious NAVO’s probes sent after them could be dealt with, Miko thought.
So the play continued. Days slipped into months. Cat and mouse games continued, and then, finally there came a lull.
Miko abandoned his desire to escape Audra. It seemed the more he tried, the more he was bound to suffer. Like Pavlov’s dog, he learned. Attempts at taking Audra unawares or sabotaging the ship or alerting the NAVO forces to their position had all been fruitless, and had been rewarded pain.
He put his energies into exploring the uncharted areas of space and of mapping worlds, all in the hopes of finding some resource, or mechanism by which he could escape his thraldom to Audra. Audra became more obsessed with besieging space stations and exploiting their secrets. Her master plan of overthrowing the Zikri was still ripe on her mind. It weighed with a heaviness that chilled Miko.
Sitty II, the onboard mind-machine merger, was an advanced piece of technology
